Growing up, one of my favorite things I liked to do when I visited my grandmother was to look at the bulletin board in the room that had once been my mother’s. I would spend hours leafing through the pictures, ribbons and other mementos tacked to the wall with rusting push-pins. The bulletin board was a time capsule, and looking at it I spent many hours transported to the era of my mother’s teenage years. In some strange way, it taught me much about the person that is my mother.

One of the more captivating pieces of paper on the bulletin board was a gatefold cover from the September 19th, 1959 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. One side of the double cover depicts a woman working in her cluttered office daydreaming of an idyllic moment at home; the other side depicts a woman amidst household chaos daydreaming of an idyllic moment at the office. After scrounging around the Internet this afternoon, this is the best image I can provide:

1959. Think about it. 1959.

I hadn’t thought about that image in years until this morning. I was thinking about Gretchen, and a post she wrote a while ago. I was thinking about my life just a couple of years ago. I was thinking about my life right now. And I was laughing at the pure irony in the fact that Zoe couldn’t care less about the toy vaccuum she was given years ago, while Evan thinks it’s the greatest thing in the entire world.

1959. You’ve come a long way, baby?